Tag: United States

Enbridge closes Illinois pipeline after fiery crash near Chicago

Enbridge has closed a pipeline in Illinois after a car crashed into the pipline in a Chicago suburb,  killing two people and setting off a fire that burned for about three hours. The pipeline leaked for about six hours.

The Chicago Tribune reported that a car crashed through a fence in New Lennox, Illinois, a Chicago suburb, and struck the pipeline.   Two men in the car died, three others, all in their 20s, in a second car, were injured. The Tribune says environmental and repair crews were able to seal the leak.

The Calgary Herald reports:

Enbridge Inc. said on Sunday it does not know yet when it can restart a key segment of its oil pipeline system in the U.S. Midwest, after a deadly vehicle accident in Illinois caused an oil leak and fire, likely squeezing supplies for refiners in the region.

The outage of Enbridge’s 318,000 barrel a day Line 14/64, which extends to Griffith, Indiana, from Superior, Wisconsin, is also expected to pressure already-weak prices for Canadian crude this week as supplies back up in Alberta, market sources and analysts said.

 

The Chicago Sun Times, in a more detailed report, “‘It’s horrible, horrible, horrible’: 2 dead in oil pipeline crash” says there were two vehicles involved in the crash about 2:05 am that caused an explosion that burned for hours

The fire that erupted in New Lenox Township could be seen from at least a half-mile away and wasn’t put out until 5 a.m., three hours after the explosion, and the pipeline wasn’t capped for six hours. The situation was so hazardous that even by Saturday afternoon, coroner’s officials had not been able to recover the bodies…

A Ford Mustang with two people inside and an SUV with three occupants were apparently driving side by side when they went through a chain-link fence at the end of a dead-end road and traveled about 125 feet before striking the pipeline. The crash ignited the crude oil inside the pipeline.

A worker said the impact with the pipe appeared to have “sheared off” the top of the Mustang.

The Sun Times says a local police officer was able to help the three injured men escape from the SUV and then get over the fence. No one was able to help the two men in the Mustang. One of the dead was later identified as a local firefighter.

The CBS News bureau in Chicago reported;

The crude oil leak was capped at 8 a.m., said Rich Adams, vice president of U.S. operations for Enbridge Energy Company.

“When you hit a liquid fuel line, usually it’s not very good. They can ignite and there was ignition,” New Lenox Fire Protection District Chief Jon Mead said.

BC 2012 halibut quota drops 8 per cent, as Canada protests devastation caused by pollock trawl in Gulf of Alaska “nursery”

The International Pacific Halibut Commission has recommended a Canadian harvest quota for the 2012 season of 7.038 million pounds of halibut, a decrease of eight per cent from the 2011 quota of 7.650 million pounds.

The Department of Fisheries and Oceans has yet to confirm the quota but it routinely follows the IPHC recommendation.

The reduction was not as bad as first feared. The commission staff were recommending a B.C coast quota of 6.633 million pounds, a decrease of 16 per cent.

The overall harvest quota decrease for the Pacific coast is 18.3 per cent, due to continuing concerns about the state of the halibut biomass.

The 2012 halibut season is much narrower, opening on March 17 and closing on November 7. The commission says the March 17 opening day was chosen because it is a Saturday and will help the marketing by both commercial and recreational fishers. The earlier November date will allow better assessment of the halibut stock after the 2012 season, according to an IPHC news release. (In Canada, DFO closed the recreational season much earlier than the date recommended by the IPHC, in September, while allowing the commercial harvest to continue.)

In the release following the annual meeting in Anchorage, Alaska, last week, the IPHC said

The Commission has expressed concern over continued declining catch rates in several areas and has taken aggressive action to reduce harvests. In addition, the staff has noted a continuing problem of reductions in previous estimates of biomass as additional data are obtained, which has the effect of increasing the realized historical harvest rates on the stock. Commission scientists will be conducting additional research on this matter in 2012….

The Commission faced very difficult decisions on the appropriate harvest from the stock and recognized the economic impact of the reduced catch limits recommended by its scientific staff. However, the Commission believes that conservation of the halibut resource is the most important management objective and will serve the best economic interests of the industry over the long term. Accordingly, catch limits adopted for 2012 were lower in all regions of the stock except Areas 2A (California, Oregon and Washington) and 2C (southeastern Alaska)

Pollock trawl bycatch crisis costs Canada $7 million a year

In the bureaucratic language of the IPHC, “The Commission expressed its continued concern about the yield and spawning biomass losses to the halibut stock from mortality of halibut in non-directed fisheries.”

The  IPHC says that British Columbia has made “significant progress” in reducing bycatch mortality and that quotas for vessels for other fish are being monitored, in California, Oregon and Washington have also had some success in reducing bycatch mortality.

It says that “Reductions have also occurred in Alaska, and new measures aimed at improving bycatch estimation, scheduled to begin in 2013, will help to refine these estimates.”

That phrase apparently masks a major problem of bycatch in the halibut nurseries off Alaska.

Craig Medred writing in the Alaska Dispatch in Should Alaska have protected halibut nursery waters noted that the Canadian delegation took a strong stand at the meetings:

Canada has protested that something needs to be done about the trawl industry [mostly for pollock] killing and dumping 10 million pounds of halibut off Alaska’s coast, but the International Pacific Halibut Commission proved powerless to do anything about it.
Meeting [last] week in Anchorage, the commission recognized the trawl catch as a potential problem, but then placed the burden of conservation squarely on the shoulders of commercial longliners along the Pacific Coast from Alaska south to California. The Commission again endorsed staff recommendations to shrink the catches of those fishermen in an effort to avoid an ever-shrinking population of adult halibut.

(This wasn’t reported in the Canadian media despite the importance of halibut both commercial and recreational to the economy of British Columbia. No Canadian media covered the IPHC conference in Alaska, despite the fact that halibut was a major issue in BC in the last federal election)

Medred’s report in the Alaska Dispatch goes on to say that the scientists say the Pacific Ocean is full of juvenile halibut, but that the juveniles seem to be disappearing before they reach spawning age (when the halibut reaches about the 32 inch catch minimum). “How much of this is due to immature fish being caught, killed and wasted by the billion-dollar pollock trawl fishery — which is in essence strip mining the Gulf of Alaska — is unknown.”

Medred says, “Scientists, commercial halibut fishermen and anglers all believe the catch is under-reported. Advisers to the commission — a U.S.-Canada treaty organization — indicated they are beyond frustrated with the bycatch issue.”

The official IPHC Bluebook report to the annual meeting said: “Not all fisheries are observed, therefore bycatch rates and discard mortality rates from similar fisheries are used to calculate bycatch mortality in unobserved fisheries.”

The official report to the IPHC gives one reason that the bycatch in Canadian waters is not as big a problem, the Department of Fisheries and Oceans ongoing monitoring of almost all commercial fisheries for bycatch.

But Canada is not satisfied with that and has submitted a formal proposal to the Commission to designate the Gulf of Alaska, “‘an area of special concern.” because the halibut that spawn in the Gulf of Alaska migrate to coastal British Columbia.

The Alaska Dispatch report says that the Canadian delegation told the IPHC: “Canada should not and must not be penalized for uncontrolled bycatch in other regulatory (areas), which IPHC staff have indicated could be costing (Canada) approximately 1 million pounds of lost yield in each year based on current, and what Canada believes may be questionable, estimates of bycatch.”

Medred says that one million pounds of halibut equals a loss of $7 million to Canadian fishermen alone.

 

IPHC news release, Jan. 31, 2012  (pdf)

Gingrich wins South Carolina primary, mangles Canadian geography, denounces Canadian plans to sell oil to China

Newt Gingrich won the South Carolina Republican primary Saturday night, Jan. 21. 2012, beating his chief rival Mitt Romney, who had a disappointing 27 per cent of the vote.

According to numerous media reports, in his victory speech Gingrich took aim at Canada, the Northern Gateway pipeline (without mentioning it by name) and, according to several reports, completely mangling Canadian geography on a couple of occasions.

According to the Canadian Press, Gingrich told cheering supporters in Charleston.

 [He] maligned the Obama administration for recently rejecting TransCanada’s Keystone XL pipeline, a project he erroneously said would bring much-needed oil to Texas from “central Canada.”

Prime Minister Stephen Harper is a “conservative and a pro-American,” he said, and now Canada will be forced to sell its oil to China.

“An American president who can create a Chinese-Canadian partnership is truly a danger to this country,” he said.

The Toronto Star reports:

“Prime Minister (Stephen) Harper — who, by the way, is a conservative and pro-American — will cut a deal with the Chinese,” Gingrich said “We have a president who can create a Chinese-Canadian partnership . . . (it is) truly a danger to this country.”

Tweets from people watching the speech, unconfirmed, so far, by news reports quote Gingrich as describing the Northern Gateway pipeline as “Harper has said he’ll “build a pipeline straight across the Rockies to Vancouver.”

UPDATED: David Atkin of SunMedia quotes the complete excerpt from Gingrich’s speech in his blog.

The president says, “No”, we don’t you to build a pipeline from central Canada straight down with no mountains intervening to the largest petrochemical centre in the world, Houston, so that we’d make money on the pipeline, we’d make money on managing the pipeline, we’d make money on refining the oil, and we’d make money on the ports of Houston and Galveston shipping the oil. Oh no, we don’t want to do that because Barack Obama and his extremist left-wing friends in San Francisco … They think that’ll really stop the oil from heading out. No. What Prime Minister Harper– who, by the way, is Conservative and pro-American — what he has said, is he’s gonna cut a deal with the Chinese and they’ll build a pipeline straight across the Rockies to Vancouver .. We’ll get none of the jobs, none of the energy, none of the opportunity. Now, an American president who can create a Chinese-Canadian partnership is truly a danger to this country.”

CBC Ottawa blogger Kady O’Malley @kady tweeted: @kady: Narrative that pipelines Canada’s “our” decision is somewhat undercut by Newt acting as though China is stealing his oil. #NGP

Denouncing Canadian export of oil apparently became part of Gingrich’s stump speech as he campaigned in South Carolina.  One local newspaper reported he made similar remarks on Wednesday, Jan. 18:

When he took the podium in the Valley Wednesday, Gingrich had some fresh news – that the president is rejecting the Keystone oil pipeline from Canada to Texas. Gingrich called the decision stupid, saying it will cost Americans jobs and the opportunity to get closer to energy independence.

“My goal is to make America so energy independent that no president has to bow down to a Saudi king,” Gingrich said. “It’s inconceivable that an American president would drive Canada into a partnership with China.”

 

According to the Star Ledger in New Jersey, Gingrich also made similar remarks about San Francisco and Canada on Friday. Paul Mulshine writes:

When the question-and-answer session began, a man asked about President Obama’s failure to move ahead with the Keystone Pipeline, a project that would bring oil from the Canadian tar sands south to the Gulf of Mexico for refining. Gingrich said that project could be under way already except that “the president decided that in order to appease a bunch of left-wing extremists in San Francisco, he’s going to stop Canadian oil.”

He then explained how the Canadians will gladly ship the oil to China if we don’t want it. It sounded good and he even had me for a moment. But then I remembered the Nancy Pelosi commercial from 2008. It’s shows Gingrich sharing a couch with a woman who could arguably be called the most powerful San Francisco liberal of all. The then-speaker of the House and the former speaker of the House sat on a couch (below) delivering a message on the need to curb greenhouse-gas emissions.

Now Gingrich is denying he ever supported cap-and-trade.

TransCanada says it will reapply to build Keystone XL pipeline

TransCanada has issued a statement saying that it will apply to the United States government to build the Keystone XL pipeline from the Alberta bitumen sands to Texas.

Related: Obama adminstration rejects Keystone XL pipeline, TransCanada can reapply

The statement reads, in part:

This outcome is one of the scenarios we anticipated. While we are disappointed, TransCanada remains fully committed to the construction of Keystone XL. Plans are already underway on a number of fronts to largely maintain the construction schedule of the project,” said Russ Girling, TransCanada’s president and chief executive officer. “We will re-apply for a Presidential Permit and expect a new application would be processed in an expedited manner to allow for an in-service date of late 2014.”

TransCanada expects that consideration of a renewed application will make use of the exhaustive record compiled over the past three plus years.

“Until this pipeline is constructed, the U.S. will continue to import millions of barrels of conflict oil from the Middle East and Venezuela and other foreign countries who do not share democratic values Canadians and Americans are privileged to have,” added Girling. “Thousands of jobs continue to hang in the balance if this project does not go forward. This project is too important to the U.S. economy, the Canadian economy and the national interest of the United States for it not to proceed.”

TransCanada will continue to work collaboratively with Nebraska’s Department of Environmental Quality on determining the safest route for Keystone XL that avoids the Sandhills. This process is expected to be complete in September or October of this year.

TransCanada has committed to a project labour agreement with the Laborers International Union of North America, the International Brotherhood of Teamsters, the United Association of Journeymen and Apprentices of the Plumbing and Pipefitting Industry of the United States and Canada, AFL-CIO, the International Union of Operating Engineers and the Pipeline Contractors Association. Any delay in approval of construction prevents this work from going to thousands of hard-working trades people.

TransCanada’s investment of billions of private dollars would create thousands more jobs in the U.S. manufacturing sector. The company has contracts with over 50 suppliers across the U.S.. Manufacturing locations for Keystone XL equipment include: Texas, Missouri, Pennsylvania, Michigan, Oklahoma, South Carolina, Indiana, Georgia, Maryland, New York, Louisiana, Minnesota, Ohio, Arkansas, Kansas, California and Pennsylvania. The benefits these companies and the people of their states continue to be delayed and the negative impacts will be felt.

Girling adds TransCanada continues to believe in Keystone XL due to the overwhelming support the project has received from American and Canadian producers and U.S. refiners who signed 17 to 18 year contracts to ship over 600,000 barrels of oil per day to meet the needs of American consumers.

Environmental groups re-issue poll, showing BC worried about US, Chinese control of natural resources

A coalition of BC  environmental groups have re-released a poll from last spring showing that almost 75 per cent of British Columbians are worried about foreign investment in Canadian natural resources. The poll also shows that only a small minority of British Columbians (15%) are concerned about charitable funding provided by US philanthropic foundations to Canadian environmental groups.

The poll was conducted by Strategic Communications in April 2011 and commissioned by the following groups: BC Sustainable Energy Association; Canadian Parks and Wilderness Society – BC Chapter; Conservation Northwest; Dogwood Initiative; Ecojustice; ForestEthics; Georgia Strait Alliance; Greenpeace; Pembina Institute; Sierra Club BC; West Coast Environmental Law; Wildsight.

The re-release of this poll is aimed at countering a poll last week, commissioned by Enbridge showing wide spread support in BC for the pipeline and an attack ad campaign by the pro-bitumen sands group Ethical Oil, which has been saying that there is too much foreign interference in the Canadian energy regulatory process.

Based on a random online sample of 830 adult British Columbians, the results are considered accurate to within plus or minus 3.4 percent 19 times out of 20.

This poll shows that 47.1% of respondents were very worried and 32.1% somewhat worried about “Americans controlling our natural resources.” Asking if people were worried about China, 39.0 % were very worried and 33.8% were somewhat worried about “China investing in our natural resources.” It shows that 38.3% were “very worried” and 34.2% “somewhat worried” about “China taking or controlling our natural resources.”

The news release from the groups says

“These poll results suggest that the oil lobby’s attacks against environmental groups are out of touch with the true values of British Columbians. The real issue is the unacceptable risk of a foreign-funded pipeline-oil tanker project that would ram pipe through unceded First Nations lands to ship some of the world’s dirtiest oil across thousands of fragile salmon-bearing rivers and streams,” said Will Horter, Executive Director of the Dogwood Initiative. “225 Supertankers a year, many larger than the Exxon Valdez, would need to transit the treacherous fjords of the Great Bear Rainforest, on route to China. This pipeline is all risk and no reward for British Columbians.”

According to the Canadian Association of Petroleum Producers (CAPP), over the three-year period from 2007-2010 alone, foreign companies poured nearly $20 billion dollars into the tar sands. In contrast, according to blogger Vivian Krause, US charitable foundations have given Canadian environmental groups less than 1.5% of that amount over a ten year period, accounting for all charitable funding on Canadian environmental issues ranging from forest protection to fisheries conservation.

“Funding for environmental charities helps to right the imbalance between ordinary citizens and the financial and political influence of multinational companies in Canada,” said Jessica Clogg of West Coast Environmental Law. “Since 1974, our environmental legal aid services have enabled citizens and community groups throughout BC to participate in resource decisions – like the proposed Enbridge Northern Gateway pipeline – that would profoundly affect their lives.”

“Canadians value the importance of environmental advocates speaking up for economic development that sustains our communities without destroying the ecology that supports us,” said Sierra Club BC Executive Director George Heyman. “We represent a legitimate Canadian viewpoint that is critical to sound policy-making, particularly when facing the influential, China-backed Enbridge pipeline lobby.”

As with many polls in a polarized situation, there are problems.  As Northwest Coast Energy News showed last week, the numbers in the Enbridge-sponsored poll are unreliable for northern British Columbia.  The environmental groups’ poll could also be considered suspect by the way the questions were phrased and the order in which they were asked.

Foreign Funding Poll Backgrounder  (Data figures from the groups who commissioned the poll)

 

Editorial: Just asking: why didn’t anyone object to the Americans at the NEB LNG hearings in Kitimat?

The Joint Review Panel hearings on the Northern Gateway pipeline are less than 48 hours from now. The media are packing their bags and coming to Kitimat (or perhaps Terrace since this town is booked solid).

The propaganda war, and it can only be called a propaganda war, is in full force, driven mostly by right wing columnist Ezra Levant and his Ethical Oil organization, objecting to “foreign intervenors in the pipeline hearings at another site OurDecision.ca

This now seems to have widespread support, in a Twitter debate last night, many even moderate conservatives and even moderate Albertans were saying there is too much foreign influence in the JRP hearings.

I have one question for these people. Where were you in June? On a beach?

It was in June that the National Energy Board held hearings on the first of the three proposed Liquified Natural Gas projects in Kitimat. No media hordes descended on Kitimat. At those hearings only local reporters showed up and I was the only one that stuck through the entire proceedings. (The NEB did approve the export application)

So when the media quote Levant and his spokesperson Kathryn Marshall, the widespread stories about this malevolent foreign influence are inaccurate because they weren’t in Kitimat in June so they didn’t hear all those deep Texas drawls in the hearing room at the Riverlodge Recreation Centre.

Although a lot of good reporters are coming into town this week, they’ll all be gone by Thursday morning when the JRP hearings move on to Terrace.

So in today’s Sun Media papers Levant says:

Who should decide whether Canada should build an oil pipeline to our west coast — Canadian citizens or foreign interests?
That’s what the fight over the Northern Gateway pipeline is about. Sure, it’s also about $20 billion a year for the Canadian economy and thousands of jobs. It’s about opening up export markets in Asia. It’s about enough new tax dollars to pay for countless hospitals and schools.
But it’s really about Canadian sovereignty. Do we get to make our own national decisions, or will we let foreign interests interfere?
The answer should be obvious to any self-respecting Canadian: This is a Canadian matter, and Canadians should decide it.

Why weren’t Levant and the rest of the blue-eyed sheikh crowd (OK they don’t all have blue yes but you know what I mean) across the Rockies here in June objecting to those Americans interfering in Canadian affairs with their plans to export liquefied natural gas to Asia?

Who is behind the Kitimat LNG project? Well, the KMLNG partners are Houston, Texas based Apache Corporation, Houston, Texas based EOG Resources and Encana, a company that originated in Canada but now has extensive operations in the United States and around the world.

The second LNG project, which is now before the National Energy Board, is BC LNG, a partnership between a Houston, Texas-based energy company and the Haisla First Nation here in Kitimat.

The third LNG project is coming from energy giant Royal Dutch Shell.

When are we going to see Ethical Oil and all those conservative columnists objecting to American participation when the NEB holds hearings on the second and third LNG projects?

This goes all the way to the centre of power. Stephen Harper objects to the Northern Gateway hearings being “hijacked by foreign money.” I notice the Prime Minister didn’t object to the hearings in June with American companies Apache and EOG investing in a natural gas pipeline. Cabinet ministers Joe Oliver and Peter Kent are also concerned about foreign influence on pipeline projects. That is they are only worried about possible foreign influence when it comes to the environment. Foreign influences that are building natural gas pipelines and LNG terminal facilities are perfectly fine, thank you.

Blaming “foreign influence”, of course, is one of the oldest dirty tricks in the political playbook. In recent days Russian Prime Minister Vladimir Putin has blamed foreign influence for the demonstrations against the rigged election in that country. In Syria, Bashir al-Assad is still blaming “foreign agitators” for the revolt against his regime. Before they were ousted, both Hosni Mubarak of Egypt and Mohamar Gaddafi of Libya blamed “foreign agitators” for the Arab Spring. Go to Google News and type in “foreign influence” or “foreign agitators” and now that Google News also searches news archives, you can find stories of politicians all over the world blaming foreigners for their troubles going back to the turn of the last century.

It’s just sad to see Canada’s leading politicians and the major media joining that sorry tradition.

Note Natural Gas is not bitumen

Some in the media seems to be puzzled that most of the people in northern British Columbia are not objecting to the liquified natural gas projects. The media seem puzzled that KM LNG has been able to reach agreements with First Nations along the natural gas pipeline routes when Enbridge can’t.

(One factor is that Enbridge got off on the wrong foot with First Nations and things have generally gone downhill from there, leading people in northwest BC to question the general competence of Enbridge management.)

The answer is that natural gas is not bitumen. Natural gas is known factor. Bitumen, despite the thousands of pages of documents field by Enbridge with the JRP, is an unknown factor since there has never been a major bitumen disaster.

The worst case scenario, a catastrophic LNG ship explosion, could cause a huge forest fire. A natural gas pipeline breach under the right conditions could start a big forest fire. The environment of northwestern British Columbia has evolved to deal with fires. After such an incident, nature would take over and the forest would eventually come back. It is likely that the forest would take longer to recover than it would from a lightning strike fire, but the forest would recover. Bitumen leaking into salmon spawning rivers would kill the rivers. Bitumen stuck at the deep and rocky bottom of Douglas Channel would contaminate the region, probably for centuries.

It’s that simple.

 

Related Terrace Daily  No Apology Forthcoming by Gerald Amos

Using northwest trees for buildings better for keeping carbon out of atmosphere, study says

A University of Washington study says that using trees from the northwest as a building material is good for carbon mitigation in the atmosphere, especially if the wood waste is also used as a biofuel to replace gasoline and other fossil fuels.

The article, published in the journal Forests, says that if timber from northwestern U.S. forests were harvested sustainably every 45 years and the wood used as a building material, where possible replacing substances like concrete or steel, which require greater amounts of fossil fuels to manufacture, that would both remove existing carbon dioxide from the air while the forest was growing and then keep the gas entering the atmosphere for years  as long as it is part of a building.

It says carbon savings can be increased by using the parts of the trees
not suitable for building materials such as slash, branches and debris
as biofuel, especially ethanol.

It also notes that some forest “residual” may be too
difficult to collect to be used a biofuel or should be left to maintain
the forest ecosystem.

The lead author of the study,  Bruce Lippke, professor emeritus of forest resources at the University of Washington, says, “When it comes  to keeping carbon dioxide out of the atmosphere, it makes more sense to use trees to recycle as much carbon  as we can and offset  the burning of fossil fuels than it does to store carbon in standing forests and continuing burning fossil fuels.”

The University of Washington says this is the first study to look at using biofuels in addition to  using wood from long living trees as a building material, as opposed to woody biofuels studied in isolation. 

The study also looked at forests in the U.S. Northeast and Southeast, and emphasized that different regions will produce different results.

It suggests that using fast growing species, such as willow, especially in the US Southeast, could have advantages.  Willow, while not usually a commercial building wood species, and with a lower carbon conversion efficiency, when used as biofuel can be both economically harvested for biofuel because of its high growth rate and that rapid growth would also be absorbing carbon dioxide from the atmosphere.

Lipke says that properly managed forests mean using wood for both building and bioenergy  is carbon neutral. That’s because the growing trees could absorb enough carbon dioxide to offset emissions from the rotting wood from used building materials after its useful life and from cars using ethanol produced from woody debris.

The biggest problem, the study suggests, is the still relatively low cost of fossil fuels,  and the low cost of  natural gas, which has made large scale conversion of wood biomass to ethanol, so far, uneconomic.

It also notes that the entire forest should be considered in any equations on carbon mitigation because it would include different lifecycles, quality of wood and different collection and manufacturing processes.

Carbon captured in building wood has a half life of 80 years  after harvest.  Then  there is a question of what should happen to that wood after its useful life, thus wood that is burned would add carbon dioxide to the atmosphere, whereas it would be better to either put the wood into landfill so it can rot or that the wood  be processed in some kind of energy recapture process.

Combined use of good wood in building and waste for ethanol, while sustaining the forest, would mean that 4.6 tonnes of carbon are captured per year for each hectare of forest. The study says “this sustainable mitigation from using wood products  and biofuels has the potential to exceed  the growth rate in forest carbon  because of the high leverage  when wood substitutes for fossil intensive  products and their emissions.”

The study also looks at ways the sustainable forest and use of biofuels could increase American energy independence.

Others participating in the study were North Carolina State University, State University of New York at Syracuse, Leonard Johnson and Associates, Moscow, Idaho, Woodlife Environmental Consultants, Corvallis, Or and Mississippi State University.
 
Sustainable Biofuel Contributions to Carbon Mitigation and Energy Independence

Editor’s note: There should be a follow-up Canadian study that looks at the carbon cost of sending raw logs to China in ships burning high carbon bunker oils, rather than finding new ways of producing lumber here, and as the study suggests, using the lumber, where possible,  to replace steel and concrete.

TransCanada agrees to reroute Keystone XL around sensitive areas

Energy Environment Politics

TransCanada Corporation announced Monday that it will reroute the controversial bitumen pipeline around environmentally sensitive areas in Nebraska.

At a news conference, in the state capital, Lincoln and in a news release, posted on its website, the company said that it supports proposed Nebraska state legislation that would ensure a pipeline route will be developed in Nebraska that avoids the environmentally sensitive Sandhills region.

Alex Pourbaix, TransCanada president for Energy and Oil Pipelines said, “”I am pleased to tell you that the positive conversations we have had with Nebraska leaders have resulted in legislation that respects the concerns of Nebraskans and supports the development of the Keystone XL pipeline…I can confirm the route will be changed and Nebraskans will play an important role in determining the final route.”

The company says it will work with the US State Department and Nebraska’s Department of Environmental Quality will conduct an environmental assessment to define the best location for Keystone XL in Nebraska. “We will cooperate with these agencies and provide them with the information they need to complete a thorough review that addresses concerns regarding the Sandhills region.”

TransCanada said.

The decision comes just four days after last Thursday’s decision by the State Department to postpone consideration of the pipeline project to allow the agency to look at alternative routes.

The 2013 decision date would also avoid the US presidential election cycle which is beginning to ramp up at this time.

In the news release,

TransCanada emphasized the safety measures it is taking on the project.

Construction of the pipeline in Nebraska would consist of five or six new pump stations and over 275 miles of new pipeline. The project is expected to employ over 2,200 construction workers in the state.

Keystone XL will be safe, built with high strength steel and with the highest safety standards of any pipeline in North America. 21,000 sensors monitor the length of the pipeline by satellite 24 hours a day, 365 days a year, with data refreshed every five seconds. If there is a problem, automatic shut-off valves can be activated in minutes – shutting off the flow of oil.

“The U.S. Department of State announced last Thursday that further assessment of alternative routes for Keystone XL was needed in Nebraska to move forward with the National Interest Determination. Today’s proposed legislation is a critical step in making this happen,” Pourbaix added. “The safe and reliable operation of our pipelines and all of our infrastructure has been TransCanada’s priority for 60 years. This commitment will continue to guide us toward a positive outcome in Nebraska.”

The pipeline would carry bitumen from the Alberta bitumen sands to refineries in Texas.

Keystone decision means Enbridge must account for climate affect of Northern Gateway, environmental group tells Joint Review Panel

Environment Energy

A coalition of environmental groups led by ForestEthics says the fact the US State Department included climate change in its decision to reassess the Keystone XL pipeline means that Enbridge just do the same for the proposed Northern Gateway pipeline from Alberta to Kitimat.

Even before the Keystone decision, the environmentalists filed a motion with the Northern Gateway Joint Review that would compel the panel to consider the up-stream impacts of tar sands from the Northern Gateway pipeline, as well as climate change impacts.

The groups say they filed the motion with the Joint Review panel on October 10 and have not yet received a response, even though, according to the group, the NGJR panel should respond within seven days.

A news release from ForestEthics says:

The State Department and the Obama administration’s decision to delay the Keystone XL pipeline sends a clear signal to Canadian decision makers,” says Nikki Skuce, Senior Energy campaigner with ForestEthics. “In the context of the climate change threat, credible pipeline review includes climate impacts…”

The Keystone decision came down to the concerns of thousands of American citizens,” said Jennifer Rice, Chair of The Friends of Wild Salmon. “Citizen concern is just as strong in Canada. We’ve had a record-breaking 4000 citizens sign-up to speak on the Gateway pipeline, and we hope Stephen Harper learns something from President Obama’s listening skills.”

ForestEthics spokesman Nikki Skuce said:

The Joint Review Panel has been reluctant to consider climate change and tar sands impacts in their assessment of Northern Gateway, yet Enbridge argues the need for this pipeline based on tar sands expansion… [President Barack] Obama’s decision sets a new North American standard for credible pipeline review. We hope the federal government does the right thing for Canadians and the planet, by including climate and tar sands impacts in their review process.

Related Links
 ForestEthics
Friends of the Wild Salmon